


A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement

by Roshwen



Category: Leverage, The Librarians
Genre: Because Portland might just be big enough for the both of them, Dialogue Heavy, Ezekiel knows the Leverage crew and tries to make a deal, Gen, Spoiler: he does not tell Parker about Santa, by which I mean, not yet anyway, this is pretty much all dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 13:47:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12985359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: ‘Hardison.’‘Yes babe?’‘Hardison, what is Ezekiel Jones doing in our bar?’





	A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement

‘Hardison.’

‘Yes babe?’

‘Hardison, what is Ezekiel Jones doing in our bar?’

Ah. Was that the time already? Apparently it was. ‘I know babe. But he contacted me yesterday. Said he was setting up shop in Portland with a team and wanted to discuss some mutual business possibilities.’

‘Huh. Well, tell him he can have his business possibilities after he’s handed me the 50.000 he stole from me ten years ago.’

Beat. ‘Babe, are you serious? You let yourself be out-thieved by that dude?’

‘Shut up, Hardison.’

‘Hm hm.’

‘It’s _not funny.’_

‘I know, I’m not laughing. I’m just smiling because I love you.’

‘You do realize I know where you keep your vintage comic books, don’t you?’

‘… I’ll go get Eliot.’

\---

‘Mr. Jones, pleasure to finally meet you.’

A grin that could rival Hardison in cockiness. ‘You sure about that, mate? The lady doesn’t seem so keen.’

‘Ah yes. About that.’

‘Don’t worry, I know you probably want to get that out of the way first. I’ll have the 50k wired to you this evening. Show of good faith and all.’

Suspicious blue eyes regard him with little more than contempt. ‘Well, that’s certainly a good start.’

‘Hey, don’t give me that. You know, me and my team, we’re in the retrieval business too now. We’re practically colleagues.’

‘Jones, you and me are not colleagues.’

‘Mr. Jones.’ A cool, clipped voice after the guttural growling. ‘What exactly are the business possibilities you mentioned?’

‘Straight to the point as always, Parker.’ The grin grows wider. ‘Like I said, me and my team are running retrievals now. We’re not gonna encroach on your turf, because I heard your team specializes in taking down old rich bastards and fat corporations. Is that correct?’

‘That is correct.’

 ‘Well, in our line of work, we regularly run into those. So I could probably toss you a mark every now and again, if you’re short on your usual clients.’

‘Right.’ Three pair of eyes, all looking at him with the same misgiving.

‘Okay, so you don’t believe me. Fine. You ever heard of Golden Axe Foods?’

‘Yeah. I looked into them a couple of years ago, because there was some _hinky_ stuff going on with their interns. But they folded before we could make a move.’

‘Yeah, well, be glad you didn’t have to make a move. My team barely got out of there alive.’

‘ _Your team_ took down Golden Axe Foods?’

He can’t resist. ‘What, like it’s hard?’

Only one of them gets the reference. Pity.

‘Anyway, like I said. We run into bad people and evil corporations all the time. Most of the time, after our job is done, they won’t be able to do any harm anymore. But sometimes they manage to get back up, and that’s where you come in.’

‘Why not finish the job yourself?’ the leader asks.

‘Because that’s not what we do.’ He gets a bit uncomfortable at this, because he knows what the next question will be.

He’s right.

‘Then what do you do?’

‘I told you. We’re in the retrieval business.’

‘Retrievin’ what, exactly?’ the retrieval expert cuts in.

He tries to bluff. ‘Items that need retrievin’, mate.’

A grunt. His bluff didn’t work the way he planned, but it will have to do.

A moment of silence. Then sharp eyes narrow in a sharp face. ‘So. You’re willing to let us clean up after you. That’s nice. And I expect you want a cut of everything we take too?’

He shakes his head. ‘Nah. You can have that. I wanted to ask you something else.’

‘What.’

Now he’s squirming again, because this is the tricky part. ‘If you ever come across something… weird. Something you can’t explain. Like… like.’ He falters a bit before it hits him. He looks at the least suspicious face out of the three of them. ‘Did you ever find out what happened to those interns?’

‘No man, and I dug pretty deep. All I could find was that they went through a _lot_ of them, even for a big corporation. And that there was _definitely_ something bad going on, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’

‘Well, if you ever come across something like that. Hinky, but you can’t seem to figure it out why. I want you to call me.’

Silence. It draws on until he’s almost at the point of explaining everything, because that is how important this is. But then:

‘Okay.’ A decisive nod. ‘We’ll call you.’

‘Parker…’ Two voices, one confused, one warning.

‘I said we’ll call him. He’s willing to pay us 50k _and_ hand us big fat marks without taking a cut for himself. I don’t trust him.’ Blue eyes glare in his general direction. ‘But he’s not exactly a scheming, sniveling rat. He’s not exactly Chaos.’

His nose wrinkles in disgust. ‘God, no.’

‘So we’ll call him.’

‘Thank you.’ He almost gets ready to leave before he remembers the other reason he came in here. ‘Oh, and Spencer? One of the people on my team is Dr. Oliver Thompson. You might want to look him up, I’m sure Hardison can find out all about him.’

‘What the hell…’

But he is already out the door, with the satisfaction of a job rather well done.


End file.
